U.S.: Russia Withheld Intel on Boston Bomb Suspect

Russia withheld a crucial piece of information from the U.S. before the Boston bombings, U.S. officials say, bolstering a concern that distrust between the two governments erased an opportunity to avert the disaster.

ENLARGE

The burial site in Doswell, Va., near Richmond, of alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Other locations wouldn't accept his remains.
Associated Press

In 2011, Russia sent an alert to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about alleged bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted in part by text messages between his mother and a Russian relative. The texts suggested Mr. Tsarnaev was interested in joining militant groups that Russia blames for attacks in the Caucasus region, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigations.

U.S. officials call these text messages the most important in a series of missed signals between the two countries. One U.S. official characterized at least one of the text messages as generally discussing jihad, but without any specific mention of terrorism plans.

The U.S. officials say they learned about them roughly a week after the April 15 bombings. Several officials say such precise information would have led to a deeper examination of Mr. Tsarnaev, who died a few days after the bombing in a police confrontation. His brother and alleged accomplice remains in custody.

More

The information Russia withheld "would have allowed the bureau to open an investigation where you could track [Mr. Tsarnaev's] communications," said House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Mich.). "To me, that's where the ball really got dropped."

Previous terror plots in the U.S. exposed lapses in data-sharing among U.S. agencies, and the official Boston review could still uncover such instances. But so far in the Boston bombing, U.S. officials say, it appears that intelligence-sharing went most awry between the U.S. and Russia. After the Russian government made its 2011 query on Mr. Tsarnaev, the FBI three times requested more information and received none, U.S. officials say. Mr. Tsarnaev was a legal resident of the U.S. and a citizen of Kyrgyzstan.

The Kremlin said Russian security services gathered little information on Mr. Tsarnaev, but officials in the province of Dagestan said they tracked him during a six-month trip there in 2012. Russia never reported such details to the U.S. While in Dagestan, Mr. Tsarnaev met with a known militant, officials in Dagestan said.

U.S. officials say they don't know why the text messages weren't provided earlier. They surmised Russia didn't provide other information because they wanted to protect their sources or because they didn't give the information much credibility themselves.

To be sure, U.S. law-enforcement officials say it isn't clear whether knowing the content of the text messages would have changed what the FBI learned in 2011 about Mr. Tsarnaev's turn toward radicalization. A senior U.S. law-enforcement official also notes that the FBI, in sharing information with the Russians, often withholds details that could reveal its own sources and methods.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he couldn't comment on specifics, but said that in 2011, "There couldn't have been detailed information on him because he didn't live on Russian territory." He declined to comment on whether Russian authorities have provided more detailed reports on Mr. Tsarnaev to the U.S. since the attack.

Cooperation in the recent weeks has improved, both Mr. Peskov and U.S. officials say, but remains incomplete. The U.S.-Russia relationship has been strained by conflicting interests in Iran as well as clashes over U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans—all feeding a relationship colored by years of post-Cold War spying.

Tensions are also rising between the U.S. and Russia over Syria. On Friday—days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Russian officials in Moscow and raised concerns over Russian arms shipments to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad—the Kremlin said it would go ahead with deliveries of ground-to-air missile systems for the Assad government. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Russian government was preparing to make such a delivery.

Following the 2001 terrorist attacks, U.S. intelligence services sought to find common ground with their Russian counterparts, but soon discovered their interests diverged, said Andrew Liepman, former deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a Central Intelligence Agency veteran. The U.S. was focused on al Qaeda, and the Russians were focused on Chechnya.

"We took a Reaganesque approach to the Russians, where you need to verify everything you get," said Mr. Liepman, who is now an analyst with the Rand Corp. think tank.

A Dagestani official said security services first focused on Mr. Tsarnaev in 2010 after they arrested a suspected rebel sympathizer, William Plotnikov, a Canadian who named Mr. Tsarnaev as an associate. Early in 2011, they intercepted text messages that alarmed Russian officials, sent by Mr. Tsarnaev's mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. Mr. Plotnikov was killed last July by Russian security forces.

In an interview, Ms. Tsarnaeva said she often communicated with relatives by text. She said she didn't know which messages might have alarmed the authorities, but denies she knew about any intentions of her son to join a rebel group.

On March 4, 2011, the Russian security service sent a formal request via the U.S. embassy in Moscow asking the FBI to look into Mr. Tsarnaev, U.S. officials said. At that time, the Russians didn't mention the texts and made reference only to Mr. Tsarnaev's interest in joining "underground" groups, a term that to U.S. ears could suggest political opposition, Dagestani officials said.

The Russian request was forwarded to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Boston. There, FBI field agents and other officials translated the letter and worked to identify Mr. Tsarnaev based on U.S. immigration and other records.

Once they had identified Mr. Tsarnaev, a U.S. Customs agent entered his name into a Treasury terrorism database. That system, known as the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, sends alerts to U.S. security officials when someone in the system is, say, preparing to travel by air.

Five days later, FBI asked the Russian Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, for more information and received no response, one U.S. official said. Officials say the information from Ms. Tsarnaeva's texts would have allowed them to get wiretapping authority.

The FBI conducted a standard 90-day inquiry, including searches of public databases, its own files, and those of other agencies, as well as a voluntary interview, U.S. officials said. Mr. Tsarnaev provided his correct birth date, which was different from the two provided by the Russians.

Under FBI guidelines, any suspicious activity could have prompted a preliminary or even a full investigation. Agents found none and the FBI closed the case in June.

On Aug. 8, the FBI made another attempt to get additional information from the FSB, and received no response, a U.S. official said.

In late September, the FSB sent an identical request to the CIA through the U.S. embassy in Moscow, officials said. The CIA didn't find anything of concern and referred the information to the FBI because Mr. Tsarnaev was a legal U.S. resident. The FBI made its third request to the FSB for more information Oct. 7.

A few days before Mr. Tsarnaev's Jan. 12, 2012, Aeroflot flight to Russia, a U.S. Customs official in the Boston task force received an alert from the Treasury database that he was planning a trip, but took no action because he wasn't seen as a danger.

Russian security services, however, had Mr. Tsarnaev in their sights. One Dagestani official said that after Mr. Tsarnaev's arrival local police determined he was staying in a ground-floor apartment his parents were renovating in the Dagestani capital, Makhachkala. Dagestani officials say he tried to build contacts with radical rebel groups in the region, and met with one Islamist fighter.

U.S. authorities heard none of this, Dagestani officials said. The monitoring of Mr. Tsarnaev was the responsibility of regional security officers, who are barred from contacting the FBI or CIA directly. When officers in Makhachkala need information from the U.S., they are directed to pass the request through Moscow.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said knowledge of the intercepted messages "would have been good enough to re-examine the individual."

After the bombing, the Kremlin said Russia had gathered no meaningful information on Mr. Tsarnaev and little that would have helped the FBI beforehand. In late April, Mr. Putin said Mr. Tsarnaev had been in the country only "episodically" and that "Russian special services were to our grave regret unable to give our American colleagues any information that would have had any operational value."

On the U.S. side, officials say after Mr. Tsarnev was identified it took a week for Russia to provide the FBI with information about the intercepted text messages.

The directors of the FBI and FSB have been in regular communication in the aftermath of the bombings and U.S. President Barack Obama has spoken with Mr. Putin about the case. This week, both FBI Director Robert Mueller and Mr. Kerry, the secretary of state, traveled to Moscow to press the Russian government for more help.

A U.S. official, however, said the Russians still aren't fully cooperating, and in particular haven't provided information from surveillance during Mr. Tsarnaev's trip. Local authorities in Dagestan say Mr. Tsarnaev, perhaps knowing he would be monitored, didn't use a mobile phone there.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.